


They're Devouring You

by nitorisource



Category: Free!, Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Shingeki no Kyojin Fusion, Blood, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-13
Updated: 2014-08-13
Packaged: 2018-02-12 22:45:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2127306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nitorisource/pseuds/nitorisource
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the sudden breach of one of the outcropping districts, the new graduates are sent out to ease evacuation of citizens and keeps the titans at bay. Makoto isn't even sure why he chose to become a soldier, and after this experience, he contemplates what other choices he has. Sousuke thinks he can tell him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They're Devouring You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Makoto wakes up, most of his squad is dead. He gets his remaining squad member to safety only to spot Haru alone and running away from a titan - Makoto doesn't know it yet, but who it turns out to be will end up being a very, very big deal to him.

Makoto wakes up with his raw, scraped face pressed against cold tile floor littered with debris and fragments of glass, and it’s entirely quiet aside from the sound of him shifting into a sitting position, breathing harshly through his nostrils as pain begins to awaken in almost every part of his body. His mind frantically screams, _why does this hurt, why does this hurt, why does this hurt_ , until he can bear the pain enough to assess his situation.

At least he doesn’t have his gear to weigh him down, he thinks bitterly. It’s nowhere in sight. He gasps when he tries to push himself to his feet, only to find himself buckle forward on his swollen ankle, and he crumples again to the floor. Hot tears are already welling up in the corners of his eyes, but he can’t cry, not in front of - 

The evening light coming in through the busted down kitchen wall reflects off a half-dried puddle of something dark and pooled around someone’s arm. Makoto’s stomach lurches forward as his eyes follow up the arm only to find the rest of the body hidden beneath a fallen section of the roof, the surrounding area a grisly scene of bone and torn flesh. There’s someone else too - half of someone else, it seems.

He scoots back until he’s pressed up against a wall, breathing fast and heavy, mind reeling both from the intense throbbing against his skull along with his inability to accept this - he curls into himself, knees pressed against his chest, fingers grasping painfully at his hair and scalp - 

“Squad… leader?”

It’s a tiny, raspy voice that Makoto almost doesn’t hear over his own panic, but he stills immediately and snaps up, eyes wide and desperate to find the source, and he sees - 

“Squad leader…”

Makoto swallows his gasp when his eyes land on the other single, conscious person in the room. “Shimizu. Shimizu, you’re - “ Hurt, badly. Makoto can’t see from where he is, but the bottom half of her uniform seems to be soaked red, and her trembling, outreached fingers are tipped dark as well.

“You’re awake. Thank… I thought you, also, were…”

Makoto clenches his teeth as he forces himself back up, leaning against the wall and trying to ignore the intense pain surging from his ankle. He limps his way to where she’s laying and his heart aches at the absent expression on her face, wondering how long she’s been awake, how long she’s been in pain. His memory is broken and faint, but he thinks he can remember her being caught upside down in a titan’s fist, its grip crushing - 

“He’s gone,” she rasps, “took him away. I saw. Ryu, I’m not… not sure if he - “

“Shh, it’s fine.” It’s _fine? Fine?_ He hates himself for saying something so hollow and useless, but she’s too far out of it to really notice. At least now he knows where the fifth member of his squad is. He hastily wipes at his face with his bloodied sleeve and steels himself before asking, “Will you be okay if I carry you?”

“I’m dying,” she answers quietly.

Makoto doesn’t even hesitate in saying, “I’ll take you back and find a medic.” He quietly moves away and kneels down beside one of the other crushed bodies to unbuckle the banged-up, but otherwise fine, 3DMG, swallowing hard as he does so.

“Worry about yourself first.”

“I’m bringing you back,” he insists, fingers curling tightly around the straps he can’t seem to undo. When his voice cracks halfway through his sentence, her eyes finally focus on him and she presses her lips together before staring back up at the broken ceiling, patiently waiting for him to finish and gauge how much gas he’s got left, which isn’t much. She simply nods and tries her best in giving him room to slip his arms beneath her.

“Squad leader?”

He exhales sharply as he hugs her tightly to her chest and rises to his feet, staggering forward when his ankle protests against the extra weight. The pain has begun to numb down to nothing more than a screaming throbbing, so he simply bites his lip as he begins to move towards the gaping hole in the wall, but new pain has begun to bloom somewhere along his ribs and it makes breathing very, very difficult.

Everything outside, like the inside of the evacuated home he found himself in, has been bashed in and reduced to rubble. Large chunks of stone are scattered over the fissured street and Makoto can’t quite match the scene to what he can remember, which isn’t much. Like Shimizu, he was caught mid air while using the 3DMG, though just barely by the foot, and he remembers the pain of something breaking before being smacked into the nearest building and blacking out. He wasn’t even awake to witness what happened to the rest of them and his chest tightens at this sick feeling of uselessness.

He still can’t understand how it’s right for him to be alive and the least injured. He was the one in charge, the one they relied on to direct them to survive when they were sent out into the district.

“Hold on tightly,” he says, getting his gear ready. Flying with the gear is his only hope of getting to the wall considering his injury, but he can’t be sure that his gas will last him the trip. It should be a straight and easy journey since he can’t see the heads of any titans bobbing over the rooftops, so without another beat of hesitance, he sends out his first cable.

It is, thankfully, uneventful getting there. It’s a little rough and his gear is sputtering on fumes by the time he scales the wall, but he’s happy nonetheless and practically collapses to his knees at the top, carefully setting Shimizu down. Her eyes are shut by the time they’re there, but her breathing is still present. Faint, but there. Aid arrives within seconds, but he insists they focus on her first - a broken hip, they say quickly to one another, along with severe blood loss and probably bruised organs.

While they tend to her, someone from support comes by to help him switch out his empty gas tanks. Makoto tries to do it himself, but his trembling fingers are too clumsy and the girl finally assures him that she’s there to do it for him. He tries his best to smile and thank her once she’s done, but she’s the one regarding him with eyes full of pity.

“Tachibana. The rest of your squad?”

He looks up suddenly and finds someone standing over him with a clipboard in hand, pen poised. Immediately, his mind is full with the pictures from earlier, of the crushed bodies and the blood splattered floors, and he glances back over to the scene within the district. From here, he can see the dozens, hundreds of titans still milling through the streets, but it seems that nearly all the soldiers have been removed. They must have signalled the retreat while he was still unconscious.

“Your squad,” the man repeats.

He blinks, eyes still glazing over the district. The breach earlier that morning was so sudden, and it’s taken less than a day for the area to be swarmed like this. They were hopelessly outnumbered and overpowered, as expected. 

“Aside from Shimizu…” he says lowly.

“Understood. Standby for further orders.”

The names of Makoto’s fallen squad members lingers on his tongue, but it seems the man already has the information he needs. His stomach flips again when he thinks of their confident faces upon grouping up that morning, each of them capable soldiers. But their training didn’t seem to amount to anything today, did it? 

Makoto snaps out of his daze just as the other man begins to turn away, blurting out, “Has Haruka Nanase come back yet?” 

The man pauses and runs a finger down his page, then flips it over and continues scanning until he purses his lips and shakes his head. “Squad Leader Nanase has not yet been accounted for on this side of the wall.”

“Ah - thank you.” Makoto knows that spiraling into worry will only make matters worse, and he’s certain that Haru must have returned to some other area, but there’s no helping the painful cinching in his heart as he tries to redirect his attention elsewhere. He’s not sure why, but gazing out at the wreckage of District Tokitsu is the only thing he can look at to quell the panic and shock still spinning inside of him.

His eyes are sliding up the gridwork of streets and homes, bouncing over the titans that get in the way, and he thinks he hears a medic calling his name when he catches something strange in the ironically calm scene below him. 

Unlike every other titan, this one is running. It’s chasing something, its back hunched forward and arms awkwardly stretched out in front of it, fingers eager for something close to the ground. 

Makoto gets a glimpse of what it’s chasing when the person runs through an intersection.

Seeing the shock of black hair is all it takes to get Makoto on his feet again, and he’s jumping over the edge before anyone can reach out to stop him.

It’s comforting to know he’s on full gas, easily weaving between the buildings and over the streets, but as he drops into the street he thinks Haru is running along, he realizes there’s no easy way to land. He braces himself as he lowers to the ground and when his cables release he tries to roll forward on his shoulder instead of aggravating his swollen ankle any further. 

He’s coughing and sputtering once he’s come to a stop and tries to sit up. A shout of Haru’s name is ready to leave his mouth as he turns around, but this person is far too tall to be who Makoto has expected to see. The black hair he thought he recognized is cut shorter and coarser, and as the person comes staggering towards Makoto, he finally recognizes him.

“Yamazaki?”

Sousuke Yamazaki graduated ranked just one space above Makoto at number seven and was also assigned to lead his own squad of other newly-graduated trainees. Makoto doesn’t know why Sousuke is alone or late to retreat, but he does see that Sousuke has a bloody arm wrapped tightly over his side, and one of his teal-blue eyes is shut because of the profusely bleeding wound just over his eyebrow. The titan behind him is gaining on him as his running becomes more clumsy and heavy.

Another set of slow, lumbering footsteps joins the running of the first titan’s. Makoto turns away from Sousuke only to find a fifteen-meter turning in at the end of the street, a wide, bloody grin splayed across its taut face, eyes hungrily focused on where Makoto is still kneeling in the middle of the street.

He staggers onto his feet and almost screams at the pain just as Sousuke catches up to him, only for his body to finally give out. Makoto is barely able to catch him by the shoulders, arms straining at just how heavy this guy is, and lowers him to the ground.

“Yamazaki? Wake up, Yamazaki!”

It’s clear that no amount of desperate shouting or slaps to the face is going to make a difference. When he leans down and presses his ear to Sousuke’s chest, he can only make out a faint, erratic heartbeat.

The titan still running towards them is only about one hundred meters away, and the one on the other end of the street is leisurely closing its own fifty meter gap.

 _Shit. Shit_ , there’s no way Makoto can carry Sousuke out of here, but he can’t leave him behind to act as titan fodder, either. Despite the screaming ache in his muscles and the acute pain in his ribs, he makes his hasty decision. Just as he finally slings one of Sousuke’s limp arms over his shoulder and gets his gear ready, someone whizzes by overhead.

“Didn’t anyone fucking tell you not to act like some kind of hero?” an unfamiliar voice shouts derisively. 

The expression of the running titan hardly changes as hot blood erupts from the sliced area behind its neck, and Haru lands lithely on the nearby roof, blades dripping. From behind, a redhead comes flying straight for Makoto, wearing a venomous scowl, and comes to a skidding stop just in front of him. He grabs Sousuke’s other arm and yells, “Let’s go!” hardly wasting a second to get back into the air with Sousuke’s weight shared between both him and Makoto. They make it to the rooftops a few streets away from the danger and Makoto buckles forward on his hurt foot as soon as they stop, leaving the redhead to cuss and swear at having to support Sousuke’s weight on his own.

“Makoto.” Haru quickly puts his blades away and kneels down with a hand on Makoto’s shoulder, leaning down to assess the brunette’s agonized expression.

“I’m fine.”

“Your foot.”

“Broken,” Makoto says, somehow getting in a chuckle.

“You were fucking injured but still went down there by yourself?”

Ah. Makoto recognizes this person. It’s Rin Matsuoka, who graduated in the number four spot right behind Haru. If he recalls correctly, he and Sousuke were close all throughout training, so he doesn’t understand why Rin is so - 

“Stop yelling,” Haru says tersely, narrowing his eyes at Rin. “Let’s just get back. Can you stand, Makoto?” Haru offers him a hand up and Makoto stares at it for a second before shaking his head and smiling lightly to himself.

“Thank you both,” he says as he staggers onto his feet. Rin only replies with a _‘Tch’_ , shifting Sousuke’s arm over his shoulder. Makoto moves forward to help him again, but Haru only frowns and takes his place supporting Sousuke instead, much to Rin’s displeasure. “Haru, I can - “

“It’s fine,” Haru says quickly, lowering his eyes. “I’ve never seen you this hurt before.

“Hurry up, we’ve got to get Sousuke help,” Rin interjects impatiently. He hasn’t said much about it yet, but Makoto can tell just how worried he is about his friend, just as Makoto thought. He wonders if maybe Rin would have stepped in sooner or later if it weren’t for Makoto, despite what Rin said about being a hero.

As they all make their way back to the wall, sun finally setting behind some faraway hills, Makoto can’t stop wondering about that. About what it means to be a hero, or if that was what he was trying to do. Wondering about why he’s heard the saying so often, and about just how easily and how many soldiers in the past have forgone that warning.

He’d never dream of calling himself a _hero_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follows the idea of the fall of Trost, but with no handy titan shifters around to reclaim the district :-(  
> Had no idea how to start this at first!! Comments appreciated!!


End file.
